Уилки Коллинз - Rambles Beyond Railways; or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot

Then, we have the preparations for the temptation, ordered thus:—"A fine serpent to be made with a virgin's face, and yellow hair on her head. Let the serpent appear, and also geese and hens." Lucifer enters immediately afterwards, and goes into the serpent, which is then directed to be "seen singing in a tree" (the actor who personated Lucifer must have had some gymnastic difficulties to contend with in his part!)—"Eve looketh strange on the serpent;" then, "talketh familiarly and cometh near him;" then, "doubteth and looketh angrily;" and then eats part of the apple, shows it to Adam, and insists on his eating part of it too, in the following lines:—

The stage direction now proceeds:—"Adam receiveth the apple and tasteth it, and so repenteth and casteth it away. Eve looketh on Adam very strangely and speaketh not anything." During this pause, the "conveyor" is told "to get the fig-leaves ready." Then Lucifer is ordered to "come out of the serpent and creep on his belly to hell;" Adam and Eve receive the curse, and depart out of Paradise, "showing a spindle and distaff"—no badly-conceived emblem of the labour to which they are henceforth doomed. And thus the second act terminates.

The third act treats of Cain and Abel; and is properly opened by an impersonation of Death. After which Cain and Abel appear to sacrifice.

Cain makes his offering of the first substance that comes to hand—"dry cow-dung"(!); and tells Abel that he is a "dolthead" and "a frothy fool" for using anything better. "Abel is stricken with a jawbone and dieth; Cain casteth him into a ditch." The effect of the first murder on the minds of our first parents, is delineated in some speeches exhibiting a certain antique simplicity of thought, which almost rises to the poetical by its homely adherence to nature, and its perfect innocence of effort, artifice, or display. The banishment of Cain, still glorying in his crime, follows the lamentations of Adam and Eve for the death of Abel; and the act is closed by Adam's announcement of the birth of Seth.

The fourth act relates the deaths of Cain and Adam, and contains some of the most eccentric, and also, some of the most elevated writing in the play. Lamech opens the scene, candidly and methodically exposing his own character in these lines:—

In this vagabond frame of mind Lamech goes out hunting, with bow and arrow, and shoots Cain, accidentally, in a bush. When Cain falls, Lamech appeals to his servant, to know what is it that he has shot. The servant declares that it is "hairy, rough, ugly, and a buck-goat of the night." Cain, however, discovers himself before he dies. There is something rudely dreary and graphic about his description of his loneliness, bare as it is of any recommendation of metaphors or epithets:

Lamech, discovering the fatal error that he has committed, kills his servant in his anger; and the scene ends with "the devils carrying them away with great noise to hell."

The second scene is between Adam and his son Seth; and here, the old dramatist often rises to an elevation of poetical feeling, which, judging from the preceding portions of the play, we should not have imagined he could reach. Barbarous as his execution may be, the simple beauty of his conception often shines through it faintly, but yet palpably, in this part of the drama.

Adam is weary of life and weary of the world; he sends Seth to the gates of Paradise to ask mercy and release for him, telling his son that he will find the way thither by his father's foot-prints, burnt into the surface of the earth which was cursed for Adam's transgression. Seth finds and follows the supernatural marks, is welcomed by the angel at the gate of Paradise, and is permitted to look in. He beholds there, an Apocalypse of the redemption of the world. On the tree of life sit the Virgin and Child; while on the tree from which Eve plucked the apple, "the woman" is seen, having power over the serpent. The vision changes, and Cain is shown in hell, "sorrowing and weeping." Then the angel plucks three kernels from the tree of life, and gives them to Seth for his father's use, saying that they shall grow to another tree of life, when more than five thousand years are ended; and that Adam shall be redeemed from his pains when that period is fulfilled. After this, Seth is dismissed by the angel and returns to communicate to his father the message of consolation which he has received.

Adam hears the result of his son's mission with thankfulness; blesses Seth; and speaks these last words, while he is confronted by Death:—

So, the patriarch dies, trusting in the promise conveyed through his son; and is buried by Seth "in a fair tomb, with some Church sonnet."

After this impressive close to the fourth act—impressive in its intention, however clumsy the appliances by which that intention is worked out—it would be doing the old author no kindness to examine his fifth act in detail. Here, he sinks again in many places, to puerility of conception and coarseness of dialogue. It is enough to say that the history of the Flood closes the drama, and that the spectators are dismissed with an epilogue, directing them to "come to-morrow, betimes, and see very great matters"—the minstrels being charged, at the conclusion to "pipe," so that all may dance together, as the proper manner of ending the day's amusements.

And now, let us close the book, look forth over this lonesome country and lonesome amphitheatre, and imagine what a scene both must have presented, when a play was to be acted on a fine summer's morning in the year 1611.

Fancy, at the outset, the arrival of the audience—people dressed in the picturesque holiday costume of the time, which varied with every varying rank, hurrying to their daylight play from miles off; all visible in every direction on the surface of the open moor, and all converging from every point of the compass to the one common centre of Piran Round. Then, imagine the assembling in the amphitheatre; the running round the outer circle of the embankment to get at the entrances; the tumbling and rushing up the steps inside; the racing of hot-headed youngsters to get to the top places; the sly deliberation of the elders in selecting the lower and safer positions; the quarrelling when a tall man chanced to stand before a short one; the giggling and blushing of buxom peasant wenches when the gallant young bachelors of the district happened to be placed behind them; the universal speculations on the weather; the universal shouting for pots of ale—and finally, as the time of the performance drew near and the minstrels appeared with their pipes, the gradual hush and stillness among the multitude; the combined stare of the whole circular mass of spectators on one point in the plain of the amphitheatre, where all knew that the actors lay hidden in a pit, properly covered in from observation—the mysterious "green-room" of the strolling players of old Cornwall!